SCBWI-SWTX Conference

Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators South West Texas Conference 2011

I wanted to share a bit of information from the SCBWI-SWTX (society of children book writers and illustrators southwest Texas region) conference that I attended recently. It was a great event with many informational speakers. I really want to thank the staff for putting it all together so well!

The first faculty member was Andrea Welch of Beach Lane Press (Simon and Schuster) She had very good advice for writers and illustrators. Andrea loves good rhyming stories and manuscripts that engage the reader. The content of a book should be emotionally giving but not sappy. A flawed characters is an interesting one. And a story should be one that you want to read over and over again. A writer or illustrator should have creative passion and an intense personal connection to a project for it to be successful.

Kristen Daly Rens from Balzer and Bray (Harper Collins) said “Open with a bang!” In your stories you should make every scene keep the story moving, every scene should keep the tension rising and things should have changed with-in the story. What really works in a story is the combination of an action plot (external action) and an emotional plot (internal action). By the closing of the story the main character should have had some personal growth.

Diane Gonzales Bertrand (writer and professor) said “to be a good writing teacher you must be a writer yourself” She always wrote as a child and later realized that she was good at it. Diane writes from her memories and shares her experience with young students. She states that we should all jump the fence and run into the open spaces and see what happens. If you receive rejection it is not the end but just another beginning.